walking contradiction
by sea-salt kisses
Summary: He wasn't programmed to feel this way when he thinks about ridiculous blonde spikes and eyes of the most soft, disarming blue. He doesn't understand why it's so hard to let Roxas go. — Axel, Roxas


**walking contradiction.  
>. . .<strong>

Axel was not programmed to miss.

He wasn't programmed to feel this way when he thinks about ridiculous blonde spikes and eyes of the most soft, disarming blue. He doesn't understand why it's so hard to let Roxas go. Why the mere thought of the Twilight Town clocktower makes an uncomfortable lump clot in his throat. Why the empty space in his chest spasms and breaks and shatters when the reality of Roxas's fractured memories – vaporized, nulled, void – registers for the first time. When he makes his way to the polystyrene town of perpetual sunset and Roxas stares at him with no fondness in his eyes. No anything. No emotion or expression at all. A blank canvas.

At first, it fuels his hopes that, maybe, Roxas will be okay. Maybe not in the way Axel wants him to. But Roxas lacking the ability to emote is one step closer to Axel's goal.

It isn't until the puppet speaks that Axel understands.

Roxas, his Roxas, is long gone. There is only the Roxas that grew up in this fake Twilight Town. The Roxas whose eyes are the same heart-wrenching blue and whose hair still smells of sea-salt ice cream, but who can't fathom the difference between a Keyblade and a stick, a Nobody and a Dusk. To him, they're all monsters, and Axel finds himself included. The unfairness of the totality of their situation makes the backs of his eyes prickle uncomfortably. His vision blurs. A malfunction in his programming.

Despite not being installed with the capacity to feel, Axel is programmed with a drive to persevere. He holds the knowledge of Roxas's dissolution tight in his fist, fingers the WINNER stick deep in his pocket with the other hand, and makes his way through the old mansion. His first fight with Roxas was testing him. Even this gives Axel hope – this Roxas possesses less finesse and technique with the Keyblade, but is every bit as ruthless as the Roxas he knows. He watches the boy, noting things about him that remind him so poignantly of the old Roxas that he grits his teeth and clenches his fists, suppressing the urge to set the city aflame and slit the throats of Roxas's 'friends' and the monsters that keep him captive.

When Roxas finally remembers Axel, he knows that it still isn't enough. Roxas, this Roxas, still only remembers bits and pieces. His eyes, when they find Axel's, are still cold and hard. Axel wishes desperately to trap the fake emotions ricocheting about within his body. The desperation, the fear, the longing, and the agonizing loneliness. Without Roxas, there is nothing left. Nothing more precious than the blonde's smile after a day of Heartless duty. Nothing more sacred than Roxas's soft, unassuming nature that hid so well behind a rough exterior when everyone else was around. Axel smiles horribly, lips twisting and chakrams spinning, and ignores the emotion so blatant on Roxas's face – anger. Determination. Guile.

The fight is bitter, rigorous, and vain. Axel is soundly defeated. His entire being aches, but nothing like the way his chest stings when their gazes meet.

Mint eyes trapped by blue, Axel wishes Roxas would finish it. A good, sound ending to the holocaust of Axel's pointless existence: to be eradicated by the one thing he treasured over everything else. The one person whose safety he valued above his own.

Instead of killing him, Roxas says his name. Axel's imaginary heart skips a beat. But it isn't enough. There is only pity in his tone. No regret. No hesitance. No remorse. No reluctance for what was to come. And this perhaps more than anything else bids Axel smile softly to keep from breaking down completely.

"Let's meet again, in the next life," he promises, and even he knows it's a shallow, hollow request. For him, there is no next life. There is only darkness, cloying and clotted. There is no more Roxas. There is only perdition.

Days pass. Weeks pass.

When he hears of Roxas's fusion with Sora, Axel breaks. He cries and he cries and he burns the walls of his room until all the white is black, and the paint peels and the flames sing and no one can hear his screaming over the din of the roiling inferno.

Axel was never programmed to love, but he would have bled himself dry for Roxas's happiness. He would have given his soul to know that Roxas would never feel pain again. Everything, everything for the boy who became another, and so never was.

And when he enables Sora to pass through Betwixt and Between, when he throws his entire being into one kamikaze attack and the flame within him burns out, Axel smiles.

Axel was never programmed for feeling, but perhaps he felt the most of all.


End file.
